Photonics fab filling key commercialization gaps while planning for future industry needs

Focus on the National Research Council

After a year and a half of operation, the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC) is on track to meet its revenue targets and is contemplating an expansion into the emerging field of microfluidics as it positions itself as a key plank in the commercialization aspirations of Canadian photonics companies. Part of the National Research Council's Institute for Microstructural Sciences (IMS), CPFC is delivering highly prized services to industry and the academic community in a highly disciplined industrial setting considered critical for companies seeking to validate and demonstrate new technologies.

Funded in 2002 but not operational until early in 2005, the CPFC provides industrial foundry services to firms of all sizes as well as academic researchers who need to fabricate experimental chip designs. Built for just over $30 million in the wake of the telecom meltdown, much of the cutting-edge equipment was purchased for 10 cents on the dollar. It's estimated that the same facility would cost nearly $150 million at today's prices.

With $10 million over five years to cover operational expenses, CPFC is seeking a new five-year funding envelope at the same level as well as additional funds. The new funding would allow it to expand into the area of microfluidics - an emerging field of microminiaturized devices that measure fluids at the micrometre level and are currently used for labs-on-a-chip and ink jet printer heads.

"Photonics used to be core to just telecom but you can build other platforms on photonics, one of which is microfluidics," says Dr Sylvain Charbonneau, director of applications technologies at IMI with responsibility for the CPFC. "The combination is certainly going to be important in the future (and) it's a technology platform we would like to investigate along with nanotechnology. ... We always have to be at the leading edge to make sure we don't fall behind and microfluidics is something we have to watch. With additional funds we could definitely get in there."

After a lengthy period during which most of CPFC's capacity was devoted to developing internal processing systems and capacity, industrial usage now comprises 70% of capacity, followed by academia at 20%. The latter is delivered through CMC Microsystems, the Centre for Photonics Fabrication Research (a university consortium led by Carleton Univ) and the Canadian Institute for Photonic Innovations, a Laval PQ-headquartered Network of Centres of Excellence.

"It's part of my mandate to maximize impact, which is to help revive the Canadian photonics industry and build this infrastructure that anyone can tap into. We have done that," says Charbonneau. "Revenue is important to the CPFC but it's not the most important metric. I want to make sure the client succeeds. Then the client pays taxes, it hired people who pay taxes. So it's job creation and creating a second economy. Those are the metrics that are more important than the government making revenues."

With the full research backing of the IMS, the CPFC is already being touted as having the potential to have more industrial impact than the IMS's Solid State Optoelectronics Consortium (SSOC), an initiative of the IMS in the late 80s and early 90s that led to the development of many of the technologies upon which the Canadian telecommunications boom was built.

"This could be even more important. The Canada Foundation for Innovation has sunk a huge chunk of money into infrastructure and NSERC and others have funded research that's still in the lab," says Charbonneau. "How are you going to push it through? Small companies need to come to a commercial entity like CPFC, We de-risk technology for them."

In the wake of the telecom downturn (which also had a major negative impact on photonics) venture capital (VC) has been reluctant to invest in start-ups where the technology is not sufficiently advanced to attract clients. That makes it extremely difficult for smaller firms to obtain the initial financing they require to grow their businesses. Charbonneau says part of his job is to inform the investment community that the CPFC exists and convince them that a small investment allowing firms to access the facility could prove highly profitable once commercialization occurs.

"One of my goals is to educate the VC community that they don't need to invest $100 million in a photonics firm as people did in 1999. Back then, you could spell photonics with an 'F' and they'd give you $100 million bucks," he says. "I want to tell them that there is an entity here that will de-risk their investment. Instead of spending $10 million on a start-up, you've got an infrastructure where you can spend $100,000 to get the contract to have a gizmo made ... Once you get customer traction, that's when VCs are interested. That's de-risking."

Perhaps surprisingly, about 45% of the firms that have used the CPFC to date have been foreign-based. While foreign firms are eligible to access the facility at a slightly higher rate than that charged to their domestic counterparts, Charbonneau says he's disappointed that more Canadian firms have not come forward.

"As for why, that's a good question. The (telecom) recovery took a long time, longer than I thought. Telecom is not photonics but it's a big driver and when it suffers in Canada everybody else suffers," he says.

Charbonneau says foreign firms serve a dual purpose. Not only do they ensure that CPFC is operating at 100% capacity, they also help the facility achieve specific milestones on its technology roadmap. He says he's particularly interested in attracting firms that have technological challenges that, if successfully solved, will help to push CPFC's capabilities forward.

"We have a technology roadmap for where we want to be at a certain point in five years. If you have a (foreign) company that will take you part way there," he says. "I can de-risk the technology at their expense and they are pulling us where we want to go. So I'm using foreign entity dollars to bring me

closer to where I want to be in the future. So when Canadian companies come in, bang, I can deliver it right away."

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